AtomTM + Pink Elln - Live at Berghain

AtomTM + Pink Elln - Live at Berghain
Uwe Schmidt and Tobias Freund know a thing or two about live electronic music. Schmidt is the man who, with less than a day's notice, managed to locate and program a rack of classic Roland machinery in order to fill an absent Ricardo Villalobos's headlining slot at MUTEK one year. And Freund is, in some sense, always a live musician; his recordings, both solo and, with Max Loderbauer, as Non Standard Institute, are heavily based upon improvisation. (We will ignore the irony that he also worked with Milli Vanilli.)

So it's no surprise that the duo's collaborative output skews heavily towards live recordings. A 1993 record for the Ongaku and Rising High labels, "Elektronikkaa 1&2" / "Electronique," was taken from 1992 performances in Helsinki and Montreux. Paris' Logistic label has released sets the pair recorded in 2004 and 2005 in Paris, Zürich and Valparaiso, Chile. This recording, on the Pomelo label, catches them live at Berghain on November 15, 2009, with 24 minutes of music split across two sides of vinyl. The B-side picks up where the A-side fades out, but both sides begin with heavy downbeats, in deference to DJs.

Their kit has changed somewhat in the past 18 years, and musical tastes have shifted, but Schmidt and Freund continue to do what they did on "Elektronikkaa 1&2," sinking the audience into a web of beats in nonstop countermotion. Of the two artists, Freund's signature is more apparent: "Side C" recalls his solo work as Tobias., with a pummeling thrum of 808s and tumbling, three-against-four pings reminiscent of classic Sähkö. Monosyllabic vocal samples add to the intensity, while the acid-inspired bassline keeps things grounded. There are no real peaks or troughs across the 11 minutes, just endless, choppy waters and a chrome horizon.

Whether coincidence or not, "Side D" sounds a lot more like Schmidt's work as Atom TM, with contrapuntal arpeggios driving forward like some perpetually transmogrifying juggernaut, a riot of syncopated bleeps and shifting waveforms. It peaks halfway through its 13-and-a-half minutes, attaining a degree of controlled mania that sounds like 1993 all over again; its long decrescendo burrows into a tunnel of muted toms and distorted high end, and the whole thing peters out with two minutes of robot death gurgle.